Multilingualism, Governance and Institutionalization in Sub-Saharan Africa as Key to Sustainability? A Case studies from southern

Abstract

Seen as the hallmark of democratization in this dynamic context, decentralization should fulfil a salient function in the overall process of democratization, reconciliation, and in instauring a balance of the new power relationship in the country. The strong conviction that it would guarantee consolidation and reinforcement of an asymmetric bottom-up process would help reverse the asymmetric top-down process in governmental institutions and capacity-building, while at the same time providing suitable answers to the daily needs of the local populations. Decentralization should, therefore, foster economic development in the rural milieu and compensate the capacity gaps in the administration, too. This consensual political objective justified the epistemology of an official discourse developing a topos focusing on the reinforcement of a political process aiming to "render the profound country his soul" (fr. "rendre son âme au Mali profond") interpreted in the national languages as the "comeback of the power to its roots" (Bambara: mara ka segin so) (cf. Coulibaly / Lima 2013). In this optic, the trefoil "democratization, decentralization, and development" constituted the magic formula encapsulating a new answer to issues of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa in general, and specifically in Mali.